Spec First with CMO Laura Foti of Specright

https://specright.com/

The amazing Laura Foti explains what Specright is and how it can improve your sustainability. Packaging Specs are so critical and being able to manage them with this incredible software system is changing the way this industry works. 

What if you could do an LCA in 10 minutes instead of 10 months? 
How can you setup an RFQ in a half hour? 
What is the future of packaging? 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lefoti/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/packaging-today-show/id1656906367

Join Us Live Daily on LinkedIn Or YouTube or listen at your leisure on Apple or Spotify 

Packaging Today Podcast 

https://open.spotify.com/show/6dksVwqEFVDWdggd27fyFF?si=e924995740f94e19

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:15

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is my friend Laura Foti, who's the Chief Marketing Officer at Specright Things are good. Welcome back. You just got, you just went to Italy. That sounds

Laura Foti: 0:27

amazing. Oh, it was so great and you'll appreciate this. I was flying, Lufthansa. And they had unbelievable packaging for their food. And I was like, I need to tell Corey all about this. It was so sustainable, so convenient, and I'm just so inspired by everything people are doing in Europe. I feel like they're so far ahead. Yeah. And it was great to just be in, you know, a different place, seeing different kinds of packaging and I returned very inspired.

Cory Connors: 0:54

I totally agree. I think the airlines are way ahead of, other, companies and, yeah, you're exactly right. Europe is way ahead and there's somebody I'm constantly reaching out to, to say what's next? What can we expect for the future? It's, I kind of liken it to fashion. it seems like fashion trends are cool in Europe before they're cool here. so they're doing the same with packaging. They just, they've got some things figured out that we need to figure out too. But let's talk about you. I'm very impressed with your background. you're, one of 30 under 30 for Forbes marketers, which is an incredible, you were just, your company was just announced as, fast companies, most innovative companies. one of, I think you were like top. Five or something, if was that right? Yeah. absolutely incredible story. But let's talk about your background a little bit.

Laura Foti: 1:42

Oh, well, thank you so much and it's great to be here. I'm a huge fan of you and what you're doing. I started my career, you know, I'm not a packaging person. I have a deep love and affinity for packaging and I'd love to talk about that, but, I actually started my career in technology consulting. I studied public relations, which is, you know, a subset I would say, of the marketing world. And, I had interned at GE in college and so I had exposure to working for ge, the brand of ge. And then I worked for GE Healthcare, so I had a little bit of exposure to just companies that made amazing things. And then I went into tech consulting after college and got to work on transforming how retailers sold their products. And you know, I joke, I'm not that old Cory, but back then it was still brick and mortar. It was still stores were actual stores. And so, when I was at Deloitte, we were helping companies go from brick and mortar to selling online, which a lot of packaging professionals know the pain. and the transformation along with that, and it really taught me, Corey, that whenever you're undergoing tremendous shifts in an industry, especially with technology, I learned that you can't just take the existing business model and lift and shift it, it doesn't work. You have to rethink how you're doing business and retailers cases. They had to rethink how they sold products online, and I think a lot of packaging professionals were in a moment like that for packaging. So I did that for a few years. Loved it. Got to work with some amazing companies and learned so much from so many people. but I had the itch to return to ge. I had such a passion for the mission and the scale of the impact of that company. I mean, if you think about ge, they have aviation and transportation and healthcare. They're moving and empowering and curing the world. And I had the opportunity to go back to their new division, which was GE Digital. And for those who don't know, they really pioneered the industrial internet of things. And the concept to me just made perfect sense because if you think about the past 15 years, the advent of iPhones and everything being connected, the vision for GE Digital was, we're gonna put sensors on all these machines, and the sensors and the data are gonna tell us things. So if we put this sensor on a jet engine or on the factory floor and the vibrations change, we know something, it might break down. So we can do, you know, we can't just do reactive maintenance, we can do preventative maintenance. And I started to see the world of manufacturing and IT industry through a different lens. And it was one of digitization where everything's connected. There's more than meets the eye. And this idea of a digital thread just really stuck with me. Of like knowing everything about this machine. And then I also at that time had exposure to other industries and manufacturing and I saw this gap and I'm like, wait, like we're gonna figure out if this machine's gonna break, but we don't necessarily know the specification of that part where it co like there was more to that connection than we were doing and it had such an impact on everything I was seeing. So. And so, you know, I ended up at spec, right? Because I wanna do something more entrepreneurial. I found Matthew Wright, who was a longtime packaging supplier and manufacturing executive, and he was doing that missing piece of the digital thread specification management. And I just immediately knew at this point it was 10 people. I'm like, this is gonna change the world. And I still believe that, and we've made so much progress on O obviously you mentioned the Fast Company award. we have some amazing customers and every day I fall more and more in love with the mission and the vision and seeing people take advantage of the internet in so many new ways really is what it comes down to.

Cory Connors: 5:26

I agree, Laura. Well said. That's absolutely exactly the way I think about spec, right? And what you're doing there is critical to the future, for a sustainable, Packaging future. And it's exciting to me to be a little small part of what you're doing there. And, I'm, I enjoy talking about it, but I wanna, I want to hear from you about what is spec, right? what do you do that is so innovative? I talk about it a lot, but I'd love to hear from you cuz you're way better at that than I am

Laura Foti: 5:56

US. Absolutely. No, I appreciate it. Specright. We created the first platform for specification data management, and that's so important. It starts with the spec, and if you're in packaging, you know how important specs are. It's everything. When you have a new idea and you're working with a supplier, you have to agree upon the specification. And when you look at industry trends and societal trends, specifications are more complex than ever, and supply chains are so interconnected. And a lot of companies don't have all of their specs is the reality. A lot of suppliers own that information or different departments own that information, there was no single source of truth that you could go to for what is that spec. Right? And at the end of the day, when we talk about sustainability, how do you know how much plastic you're using if you don't know the specification level details? And we talk a lot about befores and afters. I mean, before spec, right? There were, ERPs and PLMs have existed for decades. They weren't managing specs. we've done studies on this, Corey, it's something like 85% of specification changes are sent via email. The reality is, it's a very, specs have not been digitized before, in a single source of truth, and that's what we're doing. And this concept of a spec first approach applies so well to packaging, right? Because packaging is so complex. You have primary and secondary and tertiary, and you might have differences by region or by product, or different relationships between structures and labels, and that complexity when you digitize it. And we have a patent for many to many relationships. It enables us to have one spec that you associate to many different components versus the spec, proliferation or duplication that you see in a lot of other systems today. So, and when it comes to sustainability, the first thing is you can't be sustainable if you don't know what you have, right? So by digitizing specifications, customers get visibility into how much plastic do I have? What's, and then they have visibility into, can I rationalize packaging, right? And become more sustainable by purchasing fewer types? Or could I look at, we have analytics that say, Did you know you could change out these specs to a different material and not only save money, but be more sustainable. So the example is white to craft. You know, we, because you have all that data, you can then run analytics that tells you how to be more sustainable. reporting, it's all, it really is all about the specification when it comes to sustainability and. When I look at, I get to talk to so many companies about this, Corey, and that's why I love my job. You know, I talk to Rod Patch from Johnson and Johnson and Victoria, from O F I and many others. And these people are working, they're working on real problems. rod is like packaging billions of contact lenses. Victoria's figuring out how to ship ingredients all over the world, they don't have time to be chasing this data anymore. Right. You know, like I need them to focus on doing the sustainable packaging, not finding the data to then analyze it, to then do it. And so to me it's so powerful hearing stories of how companies are using spec, right. To use data to then actually take action and do something when it comes to sustainability.

Cory Connors: 9:14

incredible. Yeah, exactly. I think. As, somebody who's been in the packaging industry for a long time and worked with thousands of companies, I think the main selling feature just off the bat of, for spec, right, is how do you change suppliers or how do you go out for bid? How many times have I gone to a company and they've said, we don't like our current supplier. We wanna work with you, Corey. But our packaging specifications are on their engineer's laptop and we don't know how to get them without upsetting them. what if that process could take minutes rather than months or sometimes years? Like Matthew mentions in his book, to, to Change, or like Covid taught us to have a backup supplier ready to go. so many people were caught. With their proverbial pants down. This was just absolutely scary. to be in that situation, oh, well our supplier didn't tell us that they were gonna run out. Well, how could they, this has never happened before. And, you, I think that's such an important part of what Spec Ride offers. but I just wanted to mention that. I think that's a key

Laura Foti: 10:31

to this. My favorite. Part of spec, right? And this is why I appreciate Matthew so much, is he was a packaging supplier. When you look at technology, there's a lot of technology that's been designed to help the brand and be a nuisance for suppliers. Let's be honest, right? Like you think of a portal, right? But what I've learned about spec, right? And when I talk to our customers are not only brands, but they're suppliers to other brands. Right. And you know, I actually had a, one of the ma, a major packaging supplier call me a few weeks ago and say, he was like, my customers are driving me nuts because they're changing the spec and then they're saying I'm doing it wrong. And then we're disagreeing. Like the idea, there's a paradigm shift happening in this industry, and this is what I try to get people to think about. The data visibility is beneficial for all because suppliers wanna run and make packaging efficiently. And they wanna make their customers happy. And it all comes down to the trust of knowing what you're making. And that's the spec. Yeah. And so we cannot live in a world anymore where people are holding that hostage or there's a lack of visibility because things are changing very quickly. And if suppliers aren't being notified of those changes, then that's when, that's where I see a lot of problems of recalls, especially in food and beverage. beauty drugs where, oh, someone didn't send you the new label and now it's, you gotta point fingers, right? Like ev the vision I have and that we have at spec, right, is there's one spec and everyone has access to it. and if some, to, to what they need, right? I'm not saying like there's data privacy and such, but if something changes, a supplier gets notified saying, Hey, follow up. This spec has changed, right? that's good for everybody. Yes. You know, and suppliers. I think about what you do, Corey. I mean, when you're a packaging person working at a global company, I. And you're selling to a customer, how easy is it for you to pull up specs that are similar or specs that might be more sustainable? I mean, you could do this in seconds in spec, right? So to me, I'm so passionate about this transforming how the packaging community works with one another in a way that's beneficial for all. And the thing I wanna bring it back to around sustainability is people have to do it because of sustainability regulations, right? I look at the UK plastics tax. You can no longer, say to Dermalogica, I'm not gonna tell you how much pla like they're, they have to pay a tax in the uk, right? They need to know that information from their supplier. It's just a fact, right? So, I think we're gonna be away from this. I don't want people to know my data to, how do we make sure, again, no one's wasting time on that administrative task. We should all have this information. It should be digital so we're all on the same page. and you know what we're seeing, Corey is. I see a lot of companies doing sustainability once a year. And checking a box, they're like, well, we did one sustainability report. Okay, well, shouldn't you be doing that? Shouldn't that data be real time? Yeah. Instead of it being a six month project that you hire a consulting firm to do once, shouldn't you just have a live dashboard that shows your progress?

Cory Connors: 13:34

And it's a journey. You're right, it's not, you didn't accomplish it. You didn't, even if you set goals, it doesn't matter. you have, you can beat those goals. You can go beyond those. I love, I heard Kevin from Dermatologic speak in Paris about that exact thing is. This used to take me three months and a team of engineers, and now it's what did he say? 30 minutes. It's like what? This whole reporting thing is

Laura Foti: 14:02

incredible. That's what I mean by a paradigm shift. Yeah. If you've never seen Specright. It's hard to believe that there's a way to do that. Yeah. Right. People are like, what do you mean you could run an LCA in five minutes? It took me nine months. Right. Yeah. We're talking about when you have packaging information digitized. The amazing things you can do with it, it transforms how you develop packaging across the whole life cycle. Yeah. it's, and it's, one of the things I love about Kevin is, this is what I tell people. Kevin and Dermalogica, they're out there winning awards for the, because they're spending their time. Innovating their packaging, they're using their data to drive that innovation. They're working smarter, not harder. I mean, they're probably working harder too, but you know what I mean? and I'm like, every company can be that way. Imagine a world where we have thousands of packaging engineers being able to do those things right? We're gonna make progress so much faster than if we keep doing it. The status quo of spreadsheets and this like mentality of it's gonna take months and years and there's a better way to do it. But it starts with the data. It really does. Does, and we live in the information age. I mean, our whole lives are governed by this, like, you know, Cory, I had a Palm pilot, believe it or not, when I was younger. Right. I was an early adopter. I had a palm pilot. It was great. Yeah, it was great. And then I had a flip phone. The flip phone was awesome. Now I have the iPhone, like Yeah. Most packaging people still have the Palm pilot. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 15:27

It's a very antiquated industry, and that, I get that a lot is why is this industry so old school? Why is this same person doing this same thing that they've done for 25 years? Well, because of that mindset of, well, it's still works, right? it's still working. Right. We've got a spreadsheet.

Laura Foti: 15:47

Well, I don't, I think this is so important, Cory. Yeah. I don't blame the packaging professionals for this. I blame the executives at these companies. Right. For not placing a greater importance on packaging. I, you know, I was thinking about why I enjoy pa, the packaging industry so much, and it's, it gives me such a sense of wonder about the world. It's just like when you get delightful packaging or innovative packaging, it's, I really appreciate it. And the reality is most people are viewing it as an expense or a cost. Right? Right. And they're not seeing the benefits it has. I think some industries, you know, I get exposure to so many industries that some industries there's inherent value, beauty, it's part of the product, food, it keeps it safe. You know, medical, it keeps the efficacy of the product. So I think there's an appreciation, but packaging professionals have never had a seat at the table. And this is, and I, this is why I'm so passionate about talking about. Specification data management. Corey is, you know, what gets you a seat at the table? Having data and being able to constructively tell your story with facts and information. Right. Prove it right. And with spec, right? You know, a director of packaging, a VP of packaging, a manager of packaging can go tell a story that's data driven and then prove why they should do something. And that's, you know, the reality is business executives wanna speak that language. Right. Right. And so that's why too, like th this approach, this adoption of a data-driven approach to packaging, it's gonna transform the role of packaging in an organization to even more of a strategic business function, right? Not just an enabling function in supply chain. Right.

Cory Connors: 17:22

Excellent point. All of these sustainability goals have given us a seat at that table finally. Yeah. and you're, that's a great way to put this because we've earned it. and frankly, like you said, it's urgent that we have one because these goals, Affect the whole company now. And these laws, the extended producer, responsibility laws are changing everything. And packaging is gonna be at the focus of that attention.

Laura Foti: 17:50

But Absolutely. and people are doing this today, I think that's so important. I wanna communicate, this isn't something we're talking about. You could do this in five years, you know, Jen, bla Jen from soil. Years, years ago was running LCAs in, in like days right now. It's, now it's literally minutes. I think of Rodan and Fields. You know, they told me a story years ago how one of the executives said, oh, we need to benchmark our sustainability for packaging. and this woman raised her hand and was like, yeah, I can pull that report tomorrow. and the executives were shocked. They thought it was gonna be this like years long project. Right? And so, You know, this is something where, and Kevin from Dermatologic, another great example. People are doing this today, right? it's just that a lot of people don't know that there's new approaches. And I think, you know, I think a lot about why that is. And I go to Pack Expo, we're gonna, we're talk about that. I'm sure at some point in the show, when you go to Pack Expo, what do you see? Machines, you see a lot of new machinery. You see a lot of, You know, tech packaging types, technology has not come to packaging that much, right? And so like at those shows, we need to be exploring solutions like Tops or like Spec, right? Or you know, there are these two that you can use. but the industry hasn't, you know, they're still early to that transformation, right? and there's just such opportunity for the people who are leaning in. They have such a competitive advantage. That's what I tell our customers. I'm like, you're gonna be so ahead of the game and if you think about data, the more historical data you have, the more insights you get to. So like there is gonna be a penalty for like waiting to do this stuff. Yeah, exactly. You know, from a variety of different perspectives.

Cory Connors: 19:39

Yeah, I remember when we got top software, my, our designer, Tim, was so excited. He kept sending me all these reports, like, we, we could take this package and do this. We could do, and what TOPS is, for the listeners who don't know, which I think most people do, is it's a pallet optimization software and then a load optimization software, which, optimizes the box size all the way down to the primary package. it's. Absolutely incredible and can change the way you do things in minutes. like you said, this data is incredible, but you're exactly right. Yeah. That software has to be a part of the future.

Laura Foti: 20:16

And the reason I bring it up again, I have to give, you know, Victoria Chapman Galloway, a shout out here at Pack Expo, she walked us over to Tops two years ago and said, you guys need to integrate. Right, because the spec is so powerful, it can't just live in spec, right? It has to live in the ecosystem. So when we look at a spec first approach, we integrate with tops. So you can take all your packaging data that you need to then do the optimization, and you click a button and it's in tops. you're not going in and doing duplicate data entry. You know, I think about what we're doing with ISTA PAC site and digitizing. Testing so you can have that data. You know, we integrate with E R P systems and triax, compass Tool to run lifecycle analysis and Lorax e p R reporting. I mean, when you're digitizing this data, you're not just, you're doing everything with it. Like it's, everything stems from that spec, whether you're doing load and pallet optimization, of which there's sustainability benefits, right? Maybe you're. But doing better trucking routes and that's more sustainable, or you're packaging things more efficiently there, or you're doing a life cycle assessment and making truly data-driven decisions on what's better. Corey, the biggest pain point I hear from people I. And I don't wanna, I'm not trying to debate this now is some, but it's like plastic isn't always bad. Right. It's not always bad. And a lot of packaging professionals though, have trouble telling that story because they're not really running a full LCA on something. Right, right. And you know, we have an integration where you can literally run an c a and compare it to design ideas. Right in real time and make decisions about like what truly is sustainable based on what we wanna optimize for. Maybe it's for, you know, co2, maybe it's for something else, but again, it all stems from having that digital spec. Right. And then, you know, the last thing that I feel like is obvious, but worth talking about when you make something right every time. Yeah. There's no more waste. Right. You and I have walked in manufacturing facilities, what is it? 5% as high as 10% is like allowable waste of just like we messed up. We got the wrong, we ran the wrong thing. Right? Imagine if we just get rid of that to begin with, because like I said, if you're operating off of one digital spec and it changes and everyone gets notified, there's no more. We didn't know.

Cory Connors: 22:36

Yeah. That was Rev two and we're on Rev three,

Laura Foti: 22:39

right? Yeah. It's like, wouldn't we all, wouldn't that be good for everybody? I mean, the suppliers. Are hurt from that. the brands hurt from that. The consumers are hurt from that. Again, like I try to be really, you know, logical about sustainability. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 22:54

It is logical. I agree. Yeah. it's not as hard as people think. it's like, it's not this magic sauce that we're sprinkling on things, you know, it's. Oftentimes the same thing we used to focus on for how to save money. Like not making mistakes, shipping it, so in a way that it doesn't break, there's nothing sustainable about damaged goods. Even if you Even if you were able to reduce your packaging by 20%, if you get 5% damage, it's, it negates everything. all of these things are absolutely correct.

Laura Foti: 23:26

So there's so many levers. This is the point I wanna make. There's so many levers you can pull as a packaging professional to be sustainable. And depending on your organization, you might not be able to change materials, right? You might not be able to do certain things, but there are so many other ways you can do this, but you can only do it quickly through data, right? And to me, that's the magic of empowering. This generation of professionals, and one of the things I love, Corey, is the students get it. Yeah. You know, msu, the, it's being taught in a lot of classrooms. You know, Rutgers, r i t, Cal Poly, msu, students are using Specright in the classroom and they're like, this makes sense. Of course. Yeah. Like, I wanna report on my sustainability, I have to have my data. Right. And so, but it's so funny to see like the digital natives get it. But then there's still, again, just an awareness piece of p of packaging professionals not knowing that there's a different way and that it doesn't have to be hard.

Cory Connors: 24:23

Right. Exactly well said. I got to speak, to a group at Cal Poly a few months ago, and it was amazing. I was impressed with their questions, with their insights. brilliant young minds. the future of packaging is very bright. And, I agree

Laura Foti: 24:38

with you. But, and you know what they wanna be doing? They wanna be designing packaging. When they go out into the real world, they don't wanna be doing supplier questionnaires and asking suppliers for samples and building specs. And the reality is like, that's. Typically the entry level job someone gets and yeah. Again, if we're removing that administrative task, imagine like it's gonna be a talent attraction tool, it's gonna be a retention tool. Companies are gonna get so much more out of their packaging teams by unleashing them to make amazing things. Yeah. And the students are just so ready for it. I'm so, like I said, I'm so, like you said, I'm so excited to see what they're gonna do.

Cory Connors: 25:15

Well, and I'm excited to see you at Pack Expo. your booth at the last Pack Expo was, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best one there. let's talk more about that. We're gonna do some, to do some things together there. can you walk us through what's exciting

Laura Foti: 25:29

this year? I'm very excited about Pack Expo. Love seeing, folks over the years. Matthew, our c e o is going to have two talks at PackExpo, which I highly recommend. one is going to be about, the workforce challenges, right? And how, the next generation has different expectations and how companies can prepare and attract talent. Also, in terms of, it's been really hard to hire. Right. A lot of companies have open roles and they can't fill, and so there's different ways that technology can bridge that gap. and so he'll talk about that. And then ai, you know, generative AI has been all the talk and, chat, G p T and so forth and. I do see AI will come for packaging as I'm sure, you know, you believe as well. Sure. And I see such an opportunity for companies to have their own data sets to be able to use their own data to generate new ideas. I've always said that your best ideas are probably something you've already done before. Right. and he'll talk about how AI is going to transform packaging. We're also going to have Corey a huge. presence for spec, right? Network and spec. Right? Network is this concept of sharing data with other people on the platform, right? So, you know, we have customers, like I said, that supply one another. Yeah. And they need to share data with one another. Again, one click not amazing, not 10 emails and 20 spreadsheets and three PDFs, one click. You have the live data. If something changes, everyone's notified. That's to me, gonna transform sustainability. I agree. Reporting, and make it easier for everyone and improve everyone's accuracy, data accuracy. Yeah. So that's really exciting, Danielle. We'll be there talking about that, and then we're gonna have lots of demos. I'm a big believer, you know, I've tried to communicate it on this show, I get it right. If you've done, if it's taken you nine months to, to do an L C A, you're like, how do you do this in three minutes? Right? Right. We're gonna show people that. Right. And do a lot of, do a lot of showing, not a lot of telling, right. And be like, here's how you can rationalize skews in minutes with like item finder. Here's how you can run an LCA in minutes. Here's how you can build a report. In seconds. Right. And just to me, it's having people see it and listening to the light bulb go off when they get it. Like, oh, this is different. Right, right. it's so rewarding. Rewarding. It's so rewarding for me to see that. And obviously I love connecting with different professionals in the industry and hearing what's new and what everyone's focused on. So That'll be Pack Expo. And I'm also hoping to record a few episodes, my podcast too.

Cory Connors: 27:55

Yeah, let's talk about that. your podcast is doing amazing. you told me you just got to 20,000 downloads. Incredible.

Laura Foti: 28:02

Thank you. Corey, tell us about it. You've been such a role model for me too. I feel like you just went for it and. like I said, I really love what I do, and the p the podcast is called Beyond the Shelf, the Product and Packaging Podcast and at Spec, right? We don't just work with packaging teams, we work with, you know, a spec first approach is relevant to product development and quality and, and many other, functions in supply chain. Obviously, packaging is really where we started and the, what I realized is I was having all these conversations with executives in different industries. About so many different topics. Sustainability, you know, innovation. And I thought everyone could learn something from this. Like I don't wanna be the only person hearing it cause I'm not, I can't actually do anything about it, right? Like, I'm not gonna go make a product or, and so I've had folks like Jan Tharp, the former c e o of Bumblebee Seafood. I just had Stacy Tank on the chief transfer, chief transformation officer at Heineken. Kevin from Dermalogica. Rod. From Johnson. And. We talk about the people making amazing things. Yeah. And how they're approaching these difficult problems and what their strategies are. And I learned so much from them, Corey, that allows me to go back to spec and say, Hey, we need to think about how we enable people to do X, Y, and Z. Yeah. and I'm also just so inspired because what I've seen, this is a sustainability podcast. So many leaders are making this part of the business model. Yes. And. And I'm so thrilled to see that because it gives me the confidence that it's here to stay. And Jan Tharp, who is the former c e O of Bumblebee, it really clicked for me, Corey, because she said, Laura, we're fishing tuna. If we over fish, we won't have a product to sell. So for Bumblebee sustainability, literally meat is the lifeblood of their business. They have to think about a fish population like it. It's everything they do. It's a fish population. It's the different villagers that catch them like. They've, it's not just packaging, it's their whole business model. Stacy Tank and Heineken was telling me how the brewing process is so sustainable and circular, and like when they break down, what is it, the hops, like, it all generates energy and then they're feeding. That's other things. And it's all circular, right? Yeah. And so I'm so inspired that these companies are truly walking the walk. Yes. and Heineken's doing a ton with sustainable packaging too, which I think is super, they've been on the bleeding edge of that. with like dissolvable, they're labels. Yeah. Labels and incredible, yeah. So there's just, it's becoming part of the business model, and that's why for packaging professionals, like this is the time to take your seat at the table. Because companies wanna do it. They know it's good for their bottom line. They know it's good for, sustainability and they know that consumers want it. Right?

Cory Connors: 30:53

They do. They're making consumers buying decisions. Yeah. They're

Laura Foti: 30:55

making, Kevin, from term lava talks about that. How when you sell through Sephora, Sephora wants to say, is this a green product? Right. And so I think the consumer demand as well. It's all right for packaging people to be elevated in an organization and to sit at that executive team and bring the data and be the leaders and say, this is how we're gonna do it. Right. And to me that's what's so exciting because I know so many smart people in packaging and to see them start to have that influence in their organization, it's so well deserved and they're gonna have a huge impact. Yes,

Cory Connors: 31:32

exactly. I feel like I've been training for this for 26 years. Yes. Like all of a sudden people understand what I'm talking about. Yeah. And I felt like, very alone before, but now I feel like I have all of these friends who wanna talk about sustainability and packaging and it's exciting. it's an honor, it's a thrill. And, I just thank you again, Laura, for your wisdom for what you do at Spec, right. And for your partnership. I'm honored to be a small part of that team. And, how do people get in touch with you? How do they sign up for spec? Right. Today?

Laura Foti: 32:03

Yeah, great question. So if you wanna learn more, spec right.com, you can, hit get a demo and get in contact with the team. You can certainly reach out to me on email, laura l a spec right.com to connect, follow us on LinkedIn. We share a lot of updates. Also, I'd love to have more people on the podcast, so reach out to me if you wanna be on and talk about the amazing things you're making. and Corey, I just wanna say thank you because I'm such a believer that we all learn from each other. And that's how we advance this sustainability movement forward. And I've learned so much from you, and I really hope that this conversation, you know, inspires someone that they can play a bigger role and be that voice and have that seat at the table because I'm really in awe of packaging people. you guys do amazing things and I really appreciate it.

Cory Connors: 32:50

Thank you so much, and, I think spec right's gonna become an even larger part of that as we move forward to the future. I'm honored to have you as a sponsor and a friend and a coworker. so thank you so much, Laura. I appreciate you right back

Laura Foti: 33:04

at you, Cory.